Ghost Women In Another Vegas - A Poem
In a late epoch, on a night at the end of the world, a woman plucks gem-boulder rings from her fingers as she ascends in a monstrous old car up trecherous switchbacks, rocky and unguarded, near the great plunge off a dark, cranky, unforgiving mountain.
High, chilled air pummels her hair and gritted teeth, but she is warm in her massive coat and heavy dress gathered round as she flings away the jewelry, which keeps appearing, like flowers plunging into gravesites the world over.
--
In a later epoch, on a night at the end of the world, a woman is being read poetry to in a coma. The tips of her nails have been sharpened like membrane-thin swords. In her deep delta sleep, she dips the end nibs into the inks of eternal night, and builds her posthumous ouevre.
This is better than the last testament to her will, which has been reduced to a manuscript hidden in a rare and rusting trunk. Frothing and varnished, it waits. Like her- a culprit to no companions. Purring sweat into the crux of her black intellect.
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In a last epoch, on a night at the end of the world, a woman has just finished watching a long drama showing another arbitrary love story. Trading aims, the characters cross their permissions along the path of self-making. They reinforce their humanity by agonizing over choices in a bid for the sweeter side of fate.
Their unseen redundancies define them within the tasks of their choice. Too quick to discard a good thing for a new option, they compete for the status of the constant stranger. The unluckiest in the cult of the luckless.
--
In the latest epoch, on a night at the end of the world, a woman is parked at a slot machine feeling her flesh devolve into a cosmic intervention. Her serpentine head darts a forked tongue at gilt buttons limping away. The woman nearest to her vomits an opulence of spiders from her open mouth in a wet, shimmering cascade.
Jackpot plus. Seagulls hover and shit over the unstoppable roulette wheel. An incompetent dealer is smoking thru the head on the floor behind a barricade of bar chairs. Everyone's fasting. Everyone's translucent. Everyone wins.